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{{trope}}
{{quote|'''Brian''': Look, you've got it all wrong!
▲'''The Crowd''' ''[in unison]'': [[Comically Missing the Point|Yes! We're all individuals!]]<br />
▲'''Brian''': You're all different!<br />
|''[[Life of Brian]]''}}
▲'''The Crowd''' ''[in unison]'': Yes, we are all different!<br />
▲'''Man in Crowd''': I'm not.<br />
▲'''Another Man''': Shhh!|''[[Life of Brian]]''}}
Bob is neither a true messiah nor [[God Guise|a scam artist]] wanting to make his own religion. He's just a regular good guy[[Secret Organization Craving Intelligent Enigmatic Tropers Yonder|.]] And yet he is made into an object of misplaced religious faith. For added irony, this religion is likely to be one he finds repulsive — or ''would'' find repulsive, in the cases where he's not even aware of having followers. Of course, if the character is of a decent sort, he will try to clear up the misunderstanding, but that might take some persuading to do so.
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If this worship keeps growing out of a control, it can establish itself as a [[Scam Religion]]. By definitions, this kind of [[Religion Is Wrong]].
Compare and Contrast [[Stop Worshipping Me!]], where the guy not wanting to be worshiped actually ''is'' a god or messiah or similar: The faith is ''not'' truly false, but the deity doesn't want the worship anyway. See also [[A God I Am Not]], when a powerful being rejects the label of god. Also contrast and [[I'm Not a Hero, I'm
{{noreallife|not being able to see our universe from outside, we have no way of knowing which religion(s) are "true" or "false".}}
{{examples|Examples}}▼
== Comic Books ==▼
▲== [[Comic Books]] ==
* In ''[[Fables]]'', Boy Blue only wanted to be a regular guy. He became a war hero out of necessity, but hated the cruelty and slaughter that war entails and really preferred to simply be an office clerk. One of the main reasons he participated in the war effort was his hatred for tyranny. {{spoiler|After his death}}, a cult springs up around him. His worshipers long for him to come back as a bloodsoaked tyrant slaughtering all who stand in his way and indulge in the most blatant and unfair forms of nepotism. Of course, they consider this a good thing, using rhetorics very similar to how [[Big Bad|the Adversary]] justified his own reign of terror.
** The above refers to how this religion comes across in its early story arcs. Later story arcs might show how the whole thing turns out.
== [[Fan
* The ''[[Kung Fu Panda]]'' fanfic, ''[[
▲* The ''[[Kung Fu Panda]]'' fanfic, ''[[Memoirs of a Master (Fanfic)|Memoirs of a Master]]'', has Master Oogway learning that the Mongols consider him a god. Of course, he makes it clear that he wants none of that.
== Film ==▼
▲== [[Film]] ==
* C-3PO, in ''[[Return of the Jedi]]'': The Ewoks mistake him for a deity, much to his embarrassment.
** And also because it's somehow ''against his programming'' to impersonate a deity.
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* In ''[[Monty Python]]'s [[Life of Brian]]'', the eponymous character gets his own religion by mistake. See page quote.
* In ''[[The Invention of Lying]]'', Mark lives in on an Earth where lying didn't exist until he came up with the idea one day. When his mother is about to die, he tries to comfort her by telling her rather than just not-existing, she'll go to a happy place ruled over by "[[Physical God|The Man in the Sky]]." Unfortunately, the people nearby hear, and make him tell more about it until he ends up inventing Christianity, with to the point that he has to crash his true love's wedding in a chapel devoted to The Man in the Sky.
* This is part of [[The Reveal]] in ''[[The Man From Earth]]''. Professor John [[Punny Name|Oldman]] is on the verge of suddenly moving away when he tells his friends and colleagues that he is [[Really 700 Years Old|actually a 14,000]] [[Time Abyss|year old immortal]]. Intrigued, his fellow professors try to prove his story false. Eventually they get around to asking John if he was ever anyone famous. {{spoiler|It turns out John was once a student of [[
== Literature ==▼
▲== [[Literature]] ==
* In Linnea Sinclair's ''An Accidental Goddess'', the heroine wakes up and discovers that (a) [[Rip Van Winkle|she's lost a few centuries somewhere]] and (b) she's been branded a major deity. Awwwkward....
* In ''[[The Bible]]'':
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* Paul Atreides of the ''[[Dune]]'' series fits this well, being a supposed messiah to the Fremen (even though he knows their myth about a saviour is inplanted by external influence and is only set up to look as a naturally created legend).
== [[Live
* In the later seasons of ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'', Odo resents being revered as a "Founder" by Weyoun and the other Dominion grunts.▼
** In the early seasons of the same series, Sisko is uncomfortable with being the Bajorans' "
▲* In the later seasons of ''[[Star Trek Deep Space Nine]]'', Odo resents being revered as a "Founder" by Weyoun and the other Dominion grunts.
* In the ''[[Star Trek:
▲** In the early seasons of the same series, Sisko is uncomfortable with being the Bajorans' "emissary", although he gradually comes to accept it. Since Sisko is portrayed as a regular human and the "Prophets" as enigmatic aliens rather then deities, this is [[Unwanted False Faith]]. However, as the series progress, the "Prophets" become less and less of "aliens mistaken for deities" and more and more of [[Crystal Dragon Jesus|actual deities]], with Sisko becoming more and more of the Messiah - so the example is only true for the first few seasons.
* One episode of ''[[
▲* In the ''[[Star Trek the Next Generation]]'' episode "Who Watches the Watchers?", Picard inadvertently becomes a deity to a group of proto-civilization Vulcanoids. Fortunately, he's able to convince them otherwise by referencing the idea of [[Sufficiently Advanced Aliens]] (minimizing the damage to their "natural development") and asking them to consider how their own ancient ancestors might view ''them'' if they were to witness some of the things they could do with even their medieval technology.
▲* One episode of ''[[Red Dwarf (TV)|Red Dwarf]]'' was centered on Lister's discovery that the cat civilization had formed a religion vaguely based around Lister and his pet cat from 3 million years ago. He is rather horrified when he realizes that they fought a holy war over what color the hats for his planned doughnut stand should be.
* In ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'', the Stargate crew are frequently mistaken for gods in the first five or so seasons, as the villains who pose as gods are the primary users of the gate. Then there was the the time they were mistaken for ''demons''. This is mostly due to the fact that the Stargates on many worlds are left unexplained, and the people there are primitive.
* In the TV version of ''[[The Martian Chronicles]]'', a telepathic, shapeshifting Martian encounters a priest who's undergoing a crisis of faith. Since the priest longs to meet Jesus, his thoughts force the Martian to take on [[Jesus]]' appearance. The Martian begs the priest not to see him as the Messiah because he can't bear the responsibility, and fears he'll be trapped in Jesus' image forever. The priest asks the
* G'Kar became this in the final season of ''[[Babylon 5]]'' after he learned that not only were his (unfinished) memoirs published without his consent, but they outsold even the holy ''Book of G'Quan''.
* On ''[[Battlestar Galactica
* On ''[[Dead Like Me]]'' Roxy accidentally inspires a religion centered on her as a manifestation of God. She doesn't mind, but her boss is pissed and makes her go back and smash the fledgling religion.
* The last we see of Damien in ''[[Drop the Dead Donkey]]'' is as a captive of a primitive rainforest tribe, an object of worship in a cage. The penultimate shots are filmed from his point of view, but then they destroy his camera and build effigies of it instead. For the first few scenes he is happy enough with his new-found status, but once they destroy the camera, he realises there is no likelihood that they will release him...
* In early ''[[
** That's just the [[Narcissist|Tenth]] [[The Nth Doctor|Doctor]], though. The [[The Atoner|Ninth]] Doctor was very much [[Stop Worshipping Me!|uncomfortable with being thought of as a god]]. And when he absorbed the power of the [[Physical God|Bad Wolf]], he let it all go without even a hint of temptation to do something with it. Unlike, say, Ten a short time later in [[Doctor Who
{{quote|
'''Ninth Doctor:''' Don't worship me. I'd make a very bad god. }}
** That same serial features the Doctor being mistaken for Zeus by Achilles.
{{quote|
'''Doctor''' (''offended'')''':''' I beg your pardon, I do nothing of the sort! }}
* ''[[Smallville]]'': Clark has to deal with this from [[Well
== Newspaper Comics ==▼
▲== [[Newspaper Comics]] ==
* Played with in a ''[[Brewster Rockit]]'' strip in which [[The Men in Black|Agent X]] explains an ancient drawing as the story of an alien visitor who was worshipped as a god, tried to explain to the primitive humans that he was ''not'' a god, and found himself pelted with stones for espousing this heresy.
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* In ''[[Transhuman Space]]'', Adam Stein, the unofficial leader of a group of transhumanists who believed in [[The Singularity]], despite the growing evidence it wasn't going to happen, responded to 2070s criticism that "singularitanism" was a cult by sarcastically applying to register it as a religion. He was very surprised when his application was accepted, and even more surprised when he started getting new followers who seemed to take the religious aspects seriously. As of 2100, half of the Singularitists are true believers, and Stein is still trying to explain to them that it was a joke.
* An unusual example from ''[[Warhammer
** Unfortunately for the Emperor, the Chaos Gods are not powered by worship. They are powered by emotion, and existence itself.
* ''[[
** Most notably, we have Jerome Blake. A man who simply just to save as much as he could from the inevitable wars between the Great Houses, he set up Earth (and the interstellar phone company based there) to be completely neutral and untouchable, the (secular) guardians of advanced technology, so that civilisation in the Inner Sphere could be rebuilt once the fires of war burned themselves out. One set of 'deathbed revelations' to his 'chosen disciple' later, we have the foundations of the [[Cargo Cult|pseudo-church known as ComStar]], and after a couple of centuries of piled-on dogma and trappings? The [[Church Militant|Word of Blake]] and their Jihad.
** Aleksandr Kerensky would probably classify his post-mortem treatment this way, too. A military man who simply wanted to limit the damage the Inner Sphere could do to itself by denying them large amounts of weapons and soldiers, he would ''not'' have wanted to be remembered as "The Great Father" by the [[Proud Warrior Race Guy|warrior]] [[Blood Knight|society]] his son founded. [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|Especially once the Clans tried to invade the Inner Sphere, starting yet another war.]]
* Most of the [[Exalted]] respond to developing a cult of their own with something along the lines of "awesome, free motes," but Alchemicals are tasked with suppressing any unauthorised cults that spring up - including ones worshipping ''them'', many of which end up taken down by the very being they revere. (The exception is Nurad, a nation which is so screwed that Alchemical worship is actually ''mandatory'' so that the nation's remaining Champions can keep it safe from the oncoming blight zone, but most of them are not comfortable with the situation.)
== [[Video Games]] ==
* Michael Altman from ''[[Dead Space (
▲* Michael Altman from ''[[Dead Space (Franchise)|Dead Space]]'' supposedly founded the [[Church of Happyology|Church of Unitology]]. However, he was actually simply a geophysicist who found [[Artifact of Doom|the Black Marker]], and people started worshiping it and called him their Messiah. In an interesting twist at the end of ''[[Dead Space Martyr (Literature)|Dead Space Martyr]]'', he {{spoiler|was killed by government agents to make him appear as a Martyr, [[Scam Religion|fueling the flames and allowing them to get rich of donations]]. [[Downer Ending|They succeeded]].}}
* Feral animals worship Zach from ''[[Housepets (Webcomic)|Housepets]]'' as the Opener of Ways, much to his annoyance. They even steal his diary to copy into a sacred text.▼
==
▲* Feral animals worship Zach from ''[[
== [[Western Animation]] ==
* The ''[[The Transformers (
* In the ''[[South Park]]'' episode "Trapped in the Closet", Stan is mistaken by the [[Religion of Evil|Church of Scientology]] for the reincarnation of [[L. Ron Hubbard]], the church's founder. {{spoiler|[[Truth in Television|Though it turns out that L. Ron Hubbard was a fraud, and the Church's current president is simply using Stan as a way to bilk more money out of their followers]].}}
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Religion Tropes]]
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